Jim Pouillon was murdered in 2009 by a man who objected to the anti-abortion pamphlet he was distributing. Press coverage was scant, but some pro-choice groups, to their credit, denounced the murder. The New York Times didn’t run articles suggesting that over-the-top pro-choice rhetoric — likening pro-lifers to the Taliban, accusing them of seeking to oppress women, urging a crackdown on their ability to protest abortion — had set the stage for the murder.

Pro-lifers refrained from suggesting that pro-choice groups bore responsibility for the murder. (I’m not aware of any exceptions to this generalization.) That was to their credit: The suggestion would have been obscene.

Pro-choicers have been less restrained in the wake of the recent murder of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. They intend to turn the killings “into a political moment they say will put abortion opponents on the defensive.” The Washington Post, which didn’t cover Pouillon’s murder, is reporting sympathetically on claims that the rhetoric of mainstream pro-lifers is to blame for the killings. Reporters are challenging pro-life politicians about the murders, which also didn’t happen in the Pouillon case. The governor of Colorado says that “inflammatory rhetoric” from pro-lifers played a role.